


Too Good to be True

by Immicolia



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Gen, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 16:24:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15100580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immicolia/pseuds/Immicolia
Summary: When Jin's consciousness is returned, he's far more lucid than he has been in years. Shoichi keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop.





	Too Good to be True

When Jin's consciousness is returned, he's far more lucid than he has been in years. The doctors are baffled, and Shoichi still can't quite believe it. Somehow he is alert and answering questions and almost smiling and every single day is spent waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Shoichi isn't used to good things happening. Especially good things related to Jin. Everything seemed like it was getting better once before and then Jin had been brutally torn away. That everything seems fine now....

Too good to be true. That's the cliché that keeps rattling through his mind.

It takes a week before they're finally left alone to talk. The pair of them sitting across from each other on a patio and Shoichi is grasping for something to say. A thousand things on the tip of his tongue ("How are you today?" "I was so worried about you." "I'd still be fine with you staying with me if you're okay with that.") that he's afraid to say out loud just in case that is the trigger to Jin being pulled away from him again.

Then Jin looks him in the eye and says, "You know he's not real, right?"

Jin's voice has this strange, whisper-soft, quality to it now that is nothing like the exuberant boy Shoichi remembers. Not that it's surprising. After ten years of silence it only makes sense that he sound nothing like how Shoichi remembers.

Ultimately, the quality of Jin's voice is nowhere near as shocking as the words being spoken.

"What are you talking about?"

"'Fujiki.'" Shoichi can almost hear the quotation marks around that name, like Jin doesn't even want to call Yusaku by name at all. "He must have told you. Or did he try and hide it? The fact that he's not real."

"Of course he told me," Shoichi says, even as some insidious part in the back of his mind asks: _would he have if Ai hadn't thoughtlessly brought it up first?_   "The whole thing is ridiculous--"

"It's not!" The shout that tears its way out of Jin's throat is ragged and raw and almost immediately he starts coughing. A response that leaves the twin sensations of uselessness and guilt (the two most familiar feelings in the world) chasing each other around in Shoichi's gut as he tries his best to soothe him. One of his hands moves to uselessly pat at Jin's shoulder until he calms.

"It's okay, Jin--"

"It's not. None of this is okay. That Fujiki isn't real. Like I wasn't real."

Everything drops away for a moment. Sound, sight, the feeling of Jin's shirtsleeve underneath his fingertips, all of it vanishes into a single dizzying moment of vertigo where he doesn't quite want to believe what he's hearing. Doesn't want to hear anything anymore. He wants to tell Jin to stop talking because everything is _fine_ now. It's fine and he's getting better and it's _over_. Or if it's not over yet, it will be over soon because he's back safe and sound where he belongs and Yusaku will hunt down whoever it is that stole him and find out why and....

"You're-- real," he chokes out after a moment, his own heartbeat still roaring in his ears even as Jin shakes his head and grabs desperately at his hands.

Those hands are so cold. They always have been since---

" _Now_. But- but I wasn't. I was so alone, and scared. I couldn't get back and that-- _thing_." For a moment Jin's expression twists into one of pure hatred and disgust before going flat and haunted again. "Why do you think you could never reach it? If it had really been me--"

 _If it had really been me things may have not been fine right away, but it would have been better. I would have responded._ The words are unspoken but so perfectly clear.

Jin had been lost for so long because it hadn't been Jin at all.

But now he's home.

"They're trying to save us all," Jin continues, still clinging to Shoichi's hand like he's afraid of being yanked away and silenced again. "That's why they pulled that _thing_ that was living inside of me out. I'm sorry it had to be like that but would you have honestly believed it if I wasn't sitting here telling you right now." A pause. "You do believe me, don't you?"

"Of course." There is no hesitation in Shoichi's words. How can there be? Jin is here, tired and haunted (he's been through so goddamn much) but finally _safe_ and talking to him, and it all makes so much sense. Maybe a little too much. Maybe it's too good to be true to believe that everything can be fixed so easily. The wrong Jin pulled out and replaced with the real one. That long, rocky, road of recovery completely skipped past.

But Jin is smiling at him (maybe not quite like he remembers, but so very close) and quietly insisting, "We need to help him, the real Yusaku. He's still trapped. And there's so much I need to tell you about what really happened."

It's too good to be true, but at the same time Shoichi _needs_ it to be true. Ten years is long enough. He needs his brother back and if Jin tells him that everything he believed up until this point is false then he'll shift his thinking in an instant.

He has to.

"We can help everyone and then it can really be over," Jin says and Shoichi nods, fighting to speak past the tightness in his throat.

"Whatever you need, Jin. I'll do anything."

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about the possible outcomes for the Bowman vs. Yusaku duel for a little while now. And this fic is sort of a "horrible thing that I want to see happen." Because even if Yusaku wins and Jin's consciousness gets returned, there's no guarantee that it will actually _be_ Jin. And I might love the idea of a fake Jin undermining things so very, very, much that I wound up cranking this nonsense out. Although I suppose which is real and which isn't in this particular story is up for grabs.


End file.
